


Dream of Home Tonight

by stellahibernis



Series: Clear Your Heart [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dom/sub Undertones, Love is complicated, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), final part of series, redefining a relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-08 15:17:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11084310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellahibernis/pseuds/stellahibernis
Summary: Bucky is back in New York, and this time he intends to stay. Steve wants to believe it, but after losing Bucky so many times in the past, and getting his heart thoroughly bruised the last time, it will not be easy. Somehow they manage to find a way of being friends again that is surprisingly easy, but they both know it's not really where they want to leave it.A year passes as they try to learn to trust both themselves and each other again, and finally stop hiding.





	Dream of Home Tonight

**Author's Note:**

> This is the final part of the series where the story gets wrapped up.
> 
> Note on the formatting, the horizontal line signifies a change in POV, since we alternate between Steve and Bucky. The three stars mark a change in scene but not POV.

“I see you’ve redecorated,” Bucky says, taking in Steve’s house. “It doesn’t look like the weirdest professional job anymore.”

Steve glares at him, but there’s a smile underneath, so it’s okay. “Yeah, well. I had time.”

It’s probably only half the reason.

It’s been four days since Bucky arrived to New York. First two Steve spent at the hospital floor of the Tower, and the next two at his apartment there, before deciding he wanted to go home. The doctors agreed with the condition that he’d have help on the way and for settling in. Bucky probably shouldn’t be surprised that somehow everyone else Steve might have accepted to take care of him turned out to be busy, albeit no one wanted to explain with what exactly. Hence Bucky is here, helping Steve settle on the couch that’s at the same place his bed was a year earlier. Even after only that one visit, one night when he mostly didn’t care about the decor, it feels disorienting to find everything different.

Bucky goes downstairs to make them coffee and order take-out. Steve calls after him that he wants a large pizza with pretty much everything, and Bucky orders two of those. The kitchen is a bit more cluttered than the last time Bucky was there. Now it looks like Steve might actually occasionally cook for himself, even though there is a whole bunch of take-out menus stuck on the fridge with magnets. 

The usage of the different parts of the house now appears to be more conventional than the last time Bucky was there; the designated use closer to what the architect must have intended. A year earlier, when Bucky made a silent round of the house after Steve had fallen asleep, satisfied and exhausted, the upper floors had been completely empty. Only the first two floors had actually been in use and Steve’s bed had been in the middle of what now is the living room. All of it had been fairly impersonal too, Bucky remembers it looked more like a hotel with all of Steve’s things on top of the generic if tasteful decor. Back then it had looked temporary.

Now though, the house looks like a home, or at least something Steve has started to make into one. For an irrational moment Bucky thinks maybe he should have stayed away after all, since Steve seems to be doing better than he was the last time Bucky was here.

But no. Bucky pushes the thought away. He thought that way after Wakanda and it didn’t really work out, in the end he found out he couldn’t just disappear and sever all ties to past. It’s not what he wants, and it’s not what Steve wants either, he told Bucky in so many words at the hospital. And if he doesn’t want to believe the words, Steve’s eyes still track Bucky every time they’re in the same room, as if he’s afraid Bucky’s going to vanish. He won’t, but he knows it’ll be a while before Steve will believe it.

For now, what Bucky can do is eat pizza with Steve, help him upstairs where the master bedroom is indeed properly furnished this time. So is every other room, albeit Bucky thinks there are curious voids in there, space for something that Steve hasn’t yet brought to the house. Or maybe someone, although it’s not a thought Bucky is comfortable with yet. 

After Bucky makes sure Steve is sleeping he crashes onto the couch. Steve has two fully furnished guest rooms, but Bucky doesn’t take either one of them. He thinks if he did, it would feel too permanent, and maybe he wouldn’t leave at all. Maybe Steve would say Bucky should stay since he’s already settled, and truth be told, Bucky thinks neither one of them is ready for it, ready to be in each other’s space all the time again. So he sleeps on the couch, which is pretty comfortable anyway, and wakes up to Steve coming downstairs. He’s healed more again, and can walk without it being immediately evident that he nearly died just a week earlier. Bucky bets he still feels the injury.

They decide to go out for breakfast, since Steve’s fridge is fairly empty of anything edible after days spent on mission and then in recovery. When they’re done Bucky heads out to find a place for himself. Steve doesn’t even suggest Bucky should stay with him, but he does tell Bucky to come back for dinner. It feels like the right sort of compromise.

***

By luck Bucky finds himself an apartment in one of the shabbier buildings in East Village. It’s nothing much but it’s available immediately and comes furnished. Sort of anyway; there’s a bed with a questionable mattress, a small table, a chair, and a couch with a pattern that would hurt someone who cared about the decor. Bucky doesn’t, not in this place that’s not going to be permanent, however everything else will go. It’s adequate enough for now, and Bucky dumps his bag on the bed, hides the weapons he’s not going to carry on him and heads out to meet Steve for dinner.

In the following days they settle into a pattern of something that looks like an easy friendship. They spend a lot of time together, since Steve is recovering and Bucky has nothing else to do. They play cards, watch cooking shows and nature documentaries, and talk about current affairs or books they’ve read. 

They don’t talk about their past before the train, they don’t talk about what happened when Bucky was last in New York, and they don’t talk about anything that happened in between. The raw honesty they found in the hospital room has been pushed away for now, and Bucky suspects that they’re both afraid to re-engage.

It might go on like this, Bucky thinks. They might just settle here, in this new way of interacting with each other, and over time it would become a habit. It would become a new default for being friends, and it might even last for a while, but not forever. Bucky knows the two of them well enough, knows that right now they’re hiding in a way, and that Steve was never built for that. These days Bucky sort of is, maybe he even was back in Brooklyn, when he certainly didn’t let Steve see everything about himself. Still, even though he may be built for it, Bucky doesn’t want to hide, not any more.

Bucky knows that if their current existence was all there ever could be, he’d take it and be happy about it. No question about it. Yet he’s honest enough with himself to admit it’s not what he wants. He believes it’s not what Steve wants either.

***

It’s not always just the two of them, because at least one of Steve’s friends makes an appearance each day. Bucky has a bit of a hard time deciding what they think of him; it’s clear they don’t exactly like him, but they seem to tolerate his presence with Steve, even encourage it. Still, Bucky can always feel their eyes on him, and it sometimes makes him skittish, to know he’s being watched and his worth weighed.

Maybe it’s one form of friendship; not understanding something, but letting it happen regardless, because it might make Steve happier. It’s clear to Bucky that not all of Steve’s friends understand why Steve chooses to spend so much time with him, chooses to let Bucky in his life. Romanova probably does, as much as anyone can anyway, partly because there is the parallel history between her and Bucky, and also since she seems to be the one Steve confides on when it come to these kind of things.

They all watch Bucky, and Bucky watches them in return, and he does find out some things about them. He knows immediately that Romanova, Wilson, and Wanda are the ones Steve is the closest with, and he starts seeing how each of them fits into Steve’s life, the kinds of things they connect over. Then there’s him, and sometimes he too wonders about his place, same as everyone else. It’s the kind of thought pattern he’s in the process of trying to eliminate from himself, the crippling doubt, because really, all that matters is that he does fit in Steve’s life. It’s the choice Steve has made once again, and it should be enough. 

***

It’s only a week after getting back to his Brooklyn home after injury that Steve returns to work, probably over protestations of a lot of people. Apparently there is some kind of a committee meeting, so Steve puts on a suit and heads out. At least he makes the concession of getting a car to pick him up so the travel time is comfortable. 

There is a part of Bucky that wants to protest but he doesn’t. He knows that while it’ll probably suck, for all that Steve would never admit to it, it won’t really harm Steve. He’s healed enough for that at least. Hence Bucky’s going to save what good will he has for when he really needs it. He suspects that Steve currently has a lot lower tolerance for Bucky protesting over something he’s doing than he used to during the war for example.

Bucky does protest when Steve starts talking about getting back into training the next day, and they come close to yelling at each other, but Steve actually relents in the end. Steve gives it another week before he does get back into gym, and Bucky is fairly satisfied.

***

It’s few days before Christmas, and Bucky wakes up from a nightmare. It’s not unusual at all for him; these days it’s just about a third of all nights that he wakes up because of his dreams. He always wakes up every few hours, but mostly it’s just general paranoia.

This time though it’s one of those dreams after which it’s impossible to calm down and go back to sleep. His hands are shaking, he’s drenched in sweat and all he seems to see is red. He goes to take a shower, thinking the neighbors can just deal with the noise from the pipes, he’s beyond caring. He remakes the bed so he won’t have to deal with it when he finally goes to sleep the next evening, and he’s still filled with nervous energy. Back in Bucharest or Canada he cleaned his weapons or went for walks, but neither really helps more than keeping him barely together.

Now though, he has another choice. While they don’t much talk about such things, Steve has said that if Bucky struggles with nightmares or anything at all he can call. The idea is a bit uncomfortable, it makes Bucky feel too exposed, but on the other hand, if he wants them to get closer than they are now, Steve eventually needs to know, and maybe this is a way to let him.

_ Steve? _ Bucky texts before he manages to talk himself out of it, resolving that he only sends the one message that night. If Steve sleeps through the text alert it’s fine.

Steve doesn’t though, it’s less than a minute before he receives,  _ What’s going on? _

This is it then.

Bucky texts back he can’t sleep due to nightmares, and Steve sends him an address and instruction to meet him there. A quick search lets Bucky know it’s a gym, apparently an old-fashioned boxing gym. It sounds exactly the kind of place Steve would go to, despite all the facilities the Avengers have at their disposal.

When Bucky arrives, he finds the door unlocked and some of the lights on, but not enough to make it bright. Steve is in the middle of the boxing ring, wearing exercise clothes and stretching.

“I’m guessing you didn’t break in here?” Bucky says by way of greeting.

“I pay for a special membership, Archie has given me a key.”

“A special Captain America membership? I seem to remember you not liking to make a big deal about it.” Bucky feels lighter already, more settled.

“I’m willing to make an exception for not being stared at in the gym. Get in.”

Steve waves Bucky into the ring, and after a moment’s hesitation he complies, stripping out of his coat, hoodie and boots. He’s wearing sweatpants, since he couldn’t be bothered to put on anything more complicated, so he’s all ready to go. Still, he’d hesitate, except there is a stubborn set in Steve’s jaw, and Bucky knows that either he’ll do as Steve asks or they’ll argue. Besides, sparring will be a good way to release energy. There are the memories from the helicarrier at the back of his mind, the ones that still make him nauseous, but he’s got his head all for himself now, so he can do this.

They start lightly, just moving around each other, slight jabs and feints, and Bucky settles in it, finds the balance in his stance, the strength in his feet. They slowly add the intensity and bit by bit Bucky finds he can’t think of anything else but moving, punching, and blocking, and it feels good, it’s easy. Not physically; he’s having to strain all out to keep up with Steve, but it’s easy for his head. Cleansing.

They keep at it for better part of two hours, until they finally tumble down on the floor. Bucky lies on his back staring at the ceiling, in peace, the nightmare shaken away. Steve is sitting next to him, looking at him with curious eyes.

“You know you’re rusty, right? Last time we fought you we’re a much bigger challenge, and I don’t think it’s all to do with you lacking inhibitions back then.”

Bucky keeps staring at the ceiling, knowing it’s true. Replaying the last couple of hours in his head, he knows Steve adjusted to him instead of going all out. Bucky feels his face split with a grin. “Yeah, I know.”

Truth is, he hadn’t really trained at all during his year in Canada, or over the weeks he’s been back in New York. After DC, on the run and while in Bucharest he’d kept up with a program, but after waking up in Wakanda it hasn’t felt like he needs it. He’s been just that much more secure in himself. And it’s a relief, bigger than he ever could have imagined, to know that he actually can get rusty, relatively so anyway. It’s a relief to know he’s still human enough. 

Steve looks down at Bucky and smiles too, wide and real, and Bucky has seen Steve smile since he came back, but not like this. Not without reservations. He doesn’t quite know what to do with the warm feeling in his chest.

Finally Steve glances at the clock on the wall. “Come on, there’s a diner around the corner that opens in a few minutes. They have amazing bacon first thing in the morning.”

***

It’s early January and Bucky’s at Steve’s again. There were others too, earlier, including Tony Stark whom Bucky somehow managed to miss while Steve was confined to the Tower due to the injury. It was a stilted meeting, but they’re okay, Bucky thinks. As much as they can be. They pretty much decided to explicitly not talk about anything that happened in 1991 or in Siberia, and that was it.

Now it’s just Steve and Bucky, and they’re resting on Steve’s huge couch, not really talking or doing anything. It’s late, and Bucky should probably start thinking about getting back to his apartment, but he doesn’t move a muscle. For what it’s worth, Steve doesn’t seem inclined to kicking him out either.

Bucky feels loose in his head, and he’d like to think it’s the beer he’s been drinking. He can’t get drunk, not really, but he can feel something, can get just a fraction more relaxed. So maybe it’s the beer, maybe it’s the late hour, or maybe it’s just finally the time, but he finds himself turning to a question he’s been rolling in his mind occasionally. He also finds he’s ready to ask Steve, despite the fact the answer might be disappointing.

“Back there at that club,” Bucky starts, and sees Steve stiffen, “if you’d known it was me, would you still have taken me back here?”

Steve is quiet for a few breaths, considering how to answer maybe, maybe surprised by the fact that Bucky even chose to bring it up, since they don’t talk about that night, not ever. Finally he lets his head fall down against the back of the couch, staring at the ceiling as he answers.

“Yeah, I would have.”

There it is, a simple admission. It’s complete by itself, but there are a million more questions that pop into Bucky’s head. Since when did Steve look at him like that? Did they live together for years, both wanting but never taking that decisive step?

Bucky doesn’t ask any of these questions, he doesn’t think his heart could take any more revelations that night. And Steve still hasn’t looked at him.

“Even if I’d known,” Steve begins, still staring up, a frown between his brows, “even if it had happened us both knowing, would it have resulted into something better?”

It’s a question that shakes Bucky at first, because he knows how much Steve has been hurt, so he shouldn’t even question other options not being better, but then Steve always has had the tendency to look underneath the surface when he’s had time to mull over things. Under pressure he trusts his instincts, and they’ve served him fairly well, but he is a thinker too.

And Bucky has to admit to himself that maybe it wouldn’t have been better, because even if he had shown himself to Steve, he probably couldn’t have stayed. Or he would have made himself stay and it would have poisoned things between them. If he had been with Steve here in New York the whole time, Bucky thinks he wouldn’t have found the clarity he did in Canada.

Or maybe he would have. There’s no knowing for certain, there’s only the past.

“I don’t know,” Bucky says, because above all he wants to be honest. Steve finally turns to look at him, eyes steady, the frown disappearing, and Bucky thinks Steve understands his reasoning.

“Come here.” Steve tugs Bucky to him, turning on the couch so that they’re both lying against the big throw pillow Steve has, Bucky half on top of Steve, and it’s intimate in a way that’s familiar from back before the war, when touching wasn’t about desire, for all that it resided under surface.

For all that Bucky has hoped when it come to Steve and what they could become, he hasn’t really counted on this kind of closeness. It makes his skin crawl a bit, his instincts battling against the surrender. Nevertheless, he’s also safe in the knowledge that Steve will not use it against him. It’s a huge step for them, Bucky well knows it, and he feels the momentary tremble in Steve as they settle down, a tell signifying his uncertainty. Bucky rests his head on Steve’s shoulder, accepting the comfort because he needs it, needs this simple closeness, and maybe Steve does too. He drifts into sleep without realizing.

***

Bucky wakes up in the early hours of the morning. He’s alone now, draped with a blanket, but it’s not a disappointment. It’s easier like this, to know it happened but not having to face it in the morning. They’re not really there yet. It doesn’t feel like Steve’s running or hiding from him, it’s just space.

What woke him up was the front door, Bucky registers when he sees the note on the coffee table, Steve writing he’s gone for a run. It’s remarkable really, that Bucky managed not only to sleep all through the night, but deeply enough that he didn’t wake up when Steve moved around, or even when he slipped away from under him. As a result, he’s feeling better rested than usual.

Bucky thinks about it for a second, then scribbles on the note that he’ll be back, and heads out of the house.

Roundtrip to his place doesn’t take too long, and he’s back at the same time as Steve. Bucky waves with the bag from the bakery he knows by now is Steve’s favorite, and enjoys the happiness in Steve’s eyes. They eat breakfast and it’s still easy. It’s clear that they both know they’re moving forward, that they’re not just settling into the easy existence as friends.

After they’ve eaten Bucky hands out the parcel he went to get for Steve.

Steve looks inside and then at Bucky. “Are you sure?”

They’re his notebooks, written after DC, and later in and after Wakanda. There’s a lot that Bucky thinks he’ll never be able to talk about, or at least not in a very long time, but he also wants Steve to truly know, and this is the way. He nods.

“Absolutely.”

 

* * *

 

Steve takes his time reading Bucky’s notebooks. It takes him a while to settle into it at first, because Bucky’s handwriting is different now. It’s no longer the neat cursive that Steve knew by heart, it’s more modern now. He wonders if Bucky relearned or if it was taught to him for some reason, as time passed and his handwriting became too old-fashioned. It fluctuates too; clearly sometimes it’s taking Bucky more effort to get the words out, and the writing is more spaced out, each letter an individual. Other times letters, words, sentences run together, become a nearly illegible scrawl as if Bucky has had to hurry to get everything on the paper. 

The handwriting varies, and as Steve gets into the rhythm of reading, it becomes a valuable gauge of Bucky’s state of mind at the time of writing, an indicator of when things just wanted to rush out, and of the topics Bucky finds it hard to talk about, even to himself.

Steve understands soon enough that these notebooks were meant for Bucky, no one else, and he knows to appreciate the fact that he’s been given the permission to see them. He keeps them in his bedroom, in one of the drawers that contains mostly random things, out of sight.

The precision in Bucky’s choice of words is familiar, the confidence that he really says what he means. It reminds Steve of how Bucky always thrived when writing compositions at school, reminds him of the facility displayed in his letters from basic during the months after he enlisted but hadn’t yet been sent to Europe. Steve relished in every word then, even if it turned his stomach to know that Bucky was there and he wasn’t wanted. It didn’t change the fact he still wanted everything he could get of Bucky. It was true then, and nothing much has changed over the decades.

Now Steve reads every word, every mundane thing about how Bucky spent his days, every painful memory of his imprisonment, every fragment of past that HYDRA tried to erase but couldn’t. Steve reads it all, and not everything makes sense to him, since Bucky is writing to himself, referencing things that haven’t made it onto paper. But Steve understands enough, and reading helps him build a more comprehensive picture of his friend, the man he is now, the man he has become.

Steve doesn’t understand everything, but it’s enough, and he knows better than to ask Bucky. He knows the reason why he has the notebooks is that there are things Bucky can’t talk about, but ones he wants Steve to know. It’s a great show of trust, and the enormity of it takes Steve’s breath away, even now that he’s still mixed over a lot of things when it comes to Bucky, over whether he himself can trust Bucky, whether he can trust his heart with him. This is a step toward it. 

***

It’s been a few months since he thought for yet another time he was going to die but didn’t, and Steve feels like he’s constantly holding his breath, waiting for something to happen. He doesn’t quite know what.

He spent a year thinking Bucky might never come back, and he spent it well, even when it sometimes felt like he was only pretending to be moving on. Truth is, pretending is efficient; pretend to be something for long enough, and it becomes the truth, even for yourself. So it’s best to pretend to be something good. It was a time when he really settled back into living in Brooklyn, not just having a house where he spent some of his time and kept his things. It became a place to stay, a place to invite his friends to, a place to make his own. He did that, even though he knows it’s not complete yet.

Now Bucky is back and things are both the same and different. There is the bit of history, the night of Halloween that they don’t talk about, but that Steve at least thinks about constantly. Despite that, it has been surprisingly easy, more than Steve ever could have believed, to fall into a friendship that’s simple and true. Steve likes it, likes to just spend time with Bucky, who still understands him sometimes better than anyone else, despite the both of them being very different people compared to the wartime. It’s easy, and underneath the surface Steve has a hard time believing it’s true, that there isn’t some unvoiced complication ahead. 

Bit by bit they’ve been moving toward a more trustful place, somewhere they can rely on each other, can call each other in the middle of the night if they can’t sleep, can even find easy physical comfort in each other. That last bit especially is something Steve never really has had with anyone else. Somehow those moments remain disconnected from the night of that one Halloween, from the very different world of physicality that they dipped into then. 

It’s easy, and Steve thinks it’s another kind of pretending, the two of them having chosen to push away the complications for now. And Steve remembers; pretend for long enough and it becomes reality. It would be so easy to fall into it, and let this be their reality, but truth be told, he doesn’t want it. Not really.

Truth be told, he’s afraid to reach for anything else, and that’s why he feels like he’s holding his breath, unwilling to move to one direction or another.

After Bucky disappeared from his life again, Steve did some thinking, on a lot of things. On his life, goals, even happiness. He thought back to the question Sam posed to him the second time they met; what makes him happy. Steve hadn’t known then, and he didn’t know it years later either, after gaining and losing things, after regaining something only to lose it again. A year ago he still didn’t know what happiness would be like for him.

With the thinking Steve arrived to an unsettling realization that however far he looked back, he couldn’t recognize a time in his life, a constant stretch when he had been happy. There have been glimpses of course, moments, but those never lasted, there was never time to settle into it before there was another thing that went wrong, another thing to be endured. There was poverty, his illness, his mother’s illness, the war, the disconnect to the world he lived in, the disappointment in what the world had become.

Steve has come to think that maybe he never learned how to be happy, and now that everything looks up, he still doesn’t know how to grasp it, how to make it last.

It all makes him feel guilty, it feels like he’s betraying people that have been good and kind to him, because despite all the troubles, there was his mother, there was Bucky, there was Peggy; all of them shining bright in his memories. Steve often thinks that surely he should have been happy just because he had them. Surely it should have been enough. Surely he should now know how to live and be happy, with everything he has, and yet he feels like he’s grasping at straws, unsure of how to trust in it. Steve doesn’t know how to find that brightness he occasionally has felt in himself, brought by his mother’s gentle hands, the unwavering presence of Bucky, or the kiss from Peggy.

It seems unreachable, even now that Bucky has come back, and appears to have settled into himself. Steve asked about it at the hospital, and he knows Bucky now wants more than just to be content, he wants more. Steve hopes he reaches it, hopes Bucky will one day be happy. He wants to help Bucky with it too, even when he has no idea of how to do it for himself.

***

The winter passes, and Steve works, spends time with his friends, including Bucky, and day by day the feeling that there is something growing between the two of them intensifies. Day by day, he becomes more sure that sooner or later something is going to snap, and they will have to find a whole another balance.

Steve knows they’re both holding up walls around themselves, walls that protect them. Steve has had walls around him for years now, maybe they’ve always been there, and it’s difficult to lower them. But lower them he must, if he wants more with Bucky than what they have now.

Steve still doesn’t know exactly where they will end up, but trust deserves to be rewarded with trust, and Bucky has taken a step toward tearing down his own walls by giving Steve a window to his soul that must have been shuttered away for decades. Bucky gave Steve words, and now he thinks that maybe he has a response to that act.

Steve has never really gotten back into art since he left for the war, not fully, but he has been drawing. He has a pile of sketchbooks, all of them nicer than he ever could afford before he went down in the plane. He picked the first one up the day he was allowed out to the city without SHIELD escort for the first time. He started drawing again, and he’s never stopped.

Steve has no words for Bucky, because he never was much of a writer, but Bucky always seemed to know how to read his drawings. Maybe he still does.

 

* * *

 

Steve is at a conference in Europe, which means Bucky has prepared for quiet days. He’s been in New York for a few months now, and he still doesn’t have too much other than Steve taking his time, and he knows he needs to find something. He hasn’t gotten around to getting a job, since he has enough funds to last him for a while, and right now he doesn’t want something to tie his time down. In Canada he welcomed the structure it brought to his life, but now it feels too taxing. Maybe he should pick up a hobby instead.

He’s gotten back into a training regime at least. Now that he knows his skills actually do get rusty, it feels like there is a purpose to it, more than just keeping his days together. Now there is a goal, because for all that he has managed to spend more than a year awake without entering a battle, he knows there will be a time when he wants to get back into it. He’s realistic enough to know that there’ll be a time when he needs to go back if only to guard Steve’s back. For now, he too has a special membership at Archie’s, and he trains there at nights, sometimes alone, sometimes with Steve.

He’s walking home one morning, just as the first commuters start to show up on the streets, when his phone beeps with an incoming message. It’s the number Romanova gave him in his early days in New York. Bucky gave his number to her too, wanting at least someone other than Steve to be able to directly reach him, just in case. He doesn’t like to think what the need for that would be. Hence there is a momentary dread when he taps to see the message, and then he stops right in the middle of the sidewalk, reading it again.

_ Wanna go bust a HYDRA base, could use a hand, _ the text says, and it’s nothing Bucky would have expected.

He starts walking again, thinking. He honestly isn’t sure what he wants to do about this. Ever since he vanished from DC, the only time he’s fought for real was after Zemo dragged him into his mess. Other than that, Bucky has stayed away, and he’s been happy about it. And even now, with the knowledge that sooner or later something so big will happen that he’ll have to get back to it, he hasn’t considered at all whether he should make it a more regular thing.

Then again, he is bored.

There is Steve, but he has his own work, leading the Avengers, and furthermore, Bucky knows better than to try and make one person his whole life. It can never work.

_ Are you doing to look at me all disappointed if I go with Romanova to that hit of hers? _ Bucky texts Steve, just in case. He has no illusions over whether she could be doing her own thing, and while Bucky suspects she wouldn’t clue Bucky in on something Steve wouldn’t approve off, he still thinks it’s better to check. Last thing he wants is something else getting between him and Steve.

_ No, _ comes Steve’s reply.  _ She asked if she should ask you, told her I’m not your keeper. _

No, Steve is not Bucky’s keeper, doesn’t want to be either, and it’s why Bucky has found it easy again to be with Steve, to trust him. And since it’s all okay, he might as well go bust some nuts.

***

Romanova comes to pick him up that night in such an ordinary car no one would look at it twice. The thing that would be unusual for the people on the street but is very familiar to Bucky is the veritable armory at the backseat, she has a heavy gym bag full of guns and what not in there.

“How big is the base anyway? And why is it just the two of us and not a bunch of Avengers?” Bucky rifles through the bag, keeping a mental count of all the guns and how much ammo there is for each.

“It shouldn’t be too big, maybe ten people all together, trained though. Just thought I’d bring variety, so you can pick what you like best. And all the rest of us are at functions and whatnot, it’s one of those publicity days. That’s why we’re going now. Everyone knows the Avengers are busy, so they’re going to be more relaxed,” she explains.

“Fair enough.” Bucky has his own weapons, but mostly just knives and small handguns, so her additions are welcome. “Guess they’re somewhere we don’t need to worry about being quiet.”

“Believe it or not, they’re at Camp Lehigh.”

“Where Steve was trained?” Bucky asks, surprised.

“And where they had Zola in the computers.” She grimaces at the memory. “They bombed it down when we were there, but not all of the subterranean structure was destroyed, so they’ve set up a shop again.”

“Smart, I suppose, most people aren’t likely to look into something that’s already been busted.”

Bucky has memories of Zola, both the man and the computer, but he pushes them away. No use getting into it.

When they arrive to the spot where they are going to leave the car and continue on foot, Bucky finally asks the question that’s been in his mind since she asked for his help.

“Why do you trust me to do this with you? And don’t give me bullshit about redemption, you don’t know me well enough to believe that.”

“No. I trust you to do this with me because I trust you want to do right by Steve, want to belong in his life again. I didn’t know if you’d say yes, but I knew if you did, I’d have nothing to worry.”

Bucky nods, since it’s true. It also help to know that’s her reasoning; now Bucky knows he doesn’t have to second guess her either. It is still a bit disconcerting to know that someone is so well aware of his weak spots.

***

They drive into the restricted garage of the Avengers Tower early next morning, Bucky coming along since Romanova managed to guilt trip him into helping her carry up all the hard drives and files they extracted, even though the Tower is probably full of people that could do it, not to mention equipment and robots that would make all the carrying unnecessary. And yet, here Bucky is standing in the elevator with her and four boxes of hopefully useful intel. The HYDRA agents themselves are already in police custody, they called it in after they were through.

Bucky doesn’t expect at all to see Steve when the elevator doors slide open, since he was supposed to be back only the next day. Still, there he is, leaning on a table, waiting for them. Turns out there was a food poisoning outbreak at the conference, and now every intelligence agency is investigating whether it was deliberate sabotage or just a faulty cold chain. Regardless of reasons, the proceedings were cut short, and Steve is back.

He’s clearly just arrived, since he’s still wearing a suit, dark blue pinstripe, and Bucky suddenly feels like running again, because the contrast between the two of them is too big. Even when ruffled from travel, Steve is still miles away from Bucky, who’s still in the clothes he wore for the hit, covered in dirt from crawling through rubble to reach the HYDRA base unnoticed and whatever else from the actual fight.

Romanova signs everything in with the filing personnel while Steve is rifling through the boxes and Bucky is kind of drawing a blank on what’s supposed to happen now. As soon as she’s done she heads for the elevator. 

“Let’s bust another place sometime, you weren’t annoying on the comms unlike some people I know,” she says to Bucky as the doors close, leaving him with no chance to answer.

Bucky knows that when he came back to New York she didn’t have a very high opinion on him, all because of what happened between him and Steve year earlier, but now he thinks that she’s begun to, if not forgive him, at least acknowledging that he’s not a bad thing to be around. Bucky takes it.

Steve tugs him toward the elevator as well. Bucky doesn’t even question where they’re going, just lets himself be herded to the car and a driver in the garage. They don’t talk on the way to Steve’s, and there Steve directs Bucky to the guest bathroom, with an offer of a change of clothes which Bucky doesn’t need, since he brought his own. He too likes to be prepared.

As usual, they end up on the couch, both tired enough that they should probably go to sleep, but they don’t, they just stay there together. It takes Bucky a while to find the words, since there’s something he wants Steve to know, that Steve deserves to know even though he probably won’t like it. But Bucky’s decided to try to be honest, and more than that, has tried to be transparent, not hiding himself from Steve at all, and so he needs to do this, for all that it’s not going to be easy.

“You know why I left?” Bucky finally asks Steve, who glances at him from the corner of his eye.

“You gave me plenty of reasons in that letter.”

“Yeah, this is going to be one of those you’re not going to like.”

“I see.” Steve stares up into the ceiling for a second. “Well, let’s hear it, and then I’m probably going to tell you why I think you’re an idiot.”

Bucky draws a breath, not looking at Steve at all. “You know I said I thought I didn’t have a place in your life anymore, and I meant it in a personal way, but also public. The way you are now, the leader of Avengers, my presence only casts a shadow to it.”

“So you thought, because of your past with HYDRA you wouldn’t fit in?” Steve is obviously struggling to keep his voice even. “But there are others too that have done terrible things that the public knows of. There are Nat and Wanda who worked for the same people as you did, caught young and having had that used against them. There’s Clint who got brainwashed and killed his allies. There’s Bruce, and the danger inside his skin. Not to mention Ultron, who was not only genocidal, but born in that Tower, due to the actions of the Avengers. There are a lot of people in the Avengers with things to atone for, things stemming both from their choices and not, but that they still feel responsible over. And they deserve to be there because they all choose to do better. You’d fit right in, if you wanted to.”

It’s true, it’s reasonable, but it’s not exactly what Bucky means. “No, I wasn’t thinking about the Avengers in general. It’s because of what you are and what I am, people’s perceptions of you will be colored with my presence.”

Steve slumps deeper into the couch, but Bucky doesn’t think it’s about giving up.

“You know why I gave up the shield?” Steve asks. “There were many reasons, but one of them was that it carried so many perceptions about me that were untrue, that were too heavy. It made people not see me, only what they believed without evidence. I don’t care about perceptions, I’d like people to see the truth. And you are part of my life, whether you choose to be present or not.”

Bucky has thought of Steve’s reasons, has guessed some of them, had wondered about them when he’d learned that after the reunion of the Avengers Steve had chosen to pass the shield on. Bucky never knew how heavy the burden had become, never really considered it, because majority of his own perception toward Captain America is tied to the war time, when Steve had slotted into it so comfortably. Even then there had been the propaganda that hadn’t been accurate at all, but back then it hadn’t mattered as much, since Steve still got to do what he needed to. It’s only now that Bucky understands that at some point over the decades since the war the shield became something that was a hindrance to Steve, and hence he passed it on, for a new life.

“So let’s think of me,” Steve continues, “and not the me that people think they know, but the real me. Do you remember how during the war there were decisions that needed to be made, hard ones, bloody ones, and I did. I made choices to allow for our team’s survival, even if it came at cost to other units, or civilians, because it was the only way we could go after HYDRA. If we’d stopped to right every injustice we saw on the way, Schmidt would have finished his project a lot earlier, and we would have lost.”

Bucky remembers them passing people that were hungry and desperate, likely to die and doing nothing, because at the other end of the balance lay thwarting HYDRA and preventing more deaths. The war had been full of hard choices like that, and he remembers countless times that he found Steve standing watch, his eyes looking into darkness, haunted by the question of whether the cost was too much, the cost other people had to pay.

Steve is quiet before he continues. “Usually when people talk to me about the war, they don’t stop and consider the realities of it, they think I’m somehow above it. It was the propaganda that separated Captain America from other soldiers, but in reality I definitely wasn’t. No one that has any kind of power to make decisions during a war comes out of it clean, no one. That’s how wars are, you know that.”

Bucky nods. “Yeah. I know.”

“Back then, we had to preserve the image of Captain America, and at the same time there were ugly things that needed to be done. Sometimes I decided that it needed to be your hands that did those things, and just because it wasn’t my hands on the gun doesn’t mean I’m somehow innocent. It was my plan, I just had other people act on it. And in that I’m not too far away from you handlers at HYDRA, if you think of it.”

Bucky moves before thinking, his hands fisted in Steve’s shirt, knees bracketing Steve’s thighs. He’s angry, he realizes, and it should be alarming, but Steve just sits there, looking at him with calm eyes.

“Don’t say that, you are nothing like them. You didn’t take people’s minds away to get them to do what you needed to.”

“And I don’t believe that I should destroy everyone who won’t agree with me.”

“And you regret the choices where you only had bad options. None of those assholes at HYDRA ever regretted.” Bucky relaxes a bit but doesn’t fully let go of Steve’s shirt.

“Yeah. And I have to believe that it’s a vital difference, that I still can choose the greater good, but also know where the boundaries are. If I ever stop regretting, that’s where the danger lies. That’s when I’ll be no different from HYDRA. But it doesn’t mean that I’m some squeaky clean saint, whatever people might think. It’s somewhat less like that now after the Accords, but there’s a lot of rationalizing going on. I don’t want that, it’s not true, and I need to remember it’s not true.”

There’s a thread of desperation in Steve’s voice, and it’s then that Bucky realizes that maybe he’s one of the reminders for Steve, he’s the only one left that knew Steve during the war, saw every hard choice as well as every shining kindness and bravery. Bucky was there for it all, and even if a lot of his memories have been rearranged in him, he still remembers. He still sees the humanity of Steve, instead of a shining symbol, just the same way Steve sees the humanity in him, instead of just a killer.

Bucky slumps down and only then realizes he’s practically on Steve’s lap, but he doesn’t even have a chance to move before Steve wraps his arms around him and hides his face against Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky holds onto Steve too, rests his cheek over Steve’s head, and relaxes.

It could be terrifying, he thinks, the responsibility to be the only one who remembers someone, but then it goes both ways for them. And Bucky chooses this, he finally understands it’s not just him increasing Steve’s burden, he takes something away too, and in the funny way these things happen, someone else’s burden is always easier to carry. It helps Bucky to be here with Steve, and it doesn’t feel so selfish now that he finally manages to believe it helps Steve too.

***

This time Bucky lets Steve to coax him to sleep in the spare bedroom, and he wakes up early in the morning to Steve moving on the floor above. He takes a long hot shower, a thing that still feels like a luxury to him, and makes it to kitchen just as the coffee is done. They sit at the kitchen table drinking it and talking, nothing heavy and serious like the previous day, just things. It’s just as easy as their interactions were before Steve’s trip, on the outward nothing has changed, but everything is different again, they both know it. They’ve taken another step forward, another step to finding out what kind of an equilibrium they can reach when they stop running and hiding. It’s a process, not an easy one by any means, but Bucky wouldn’t change it for anything.

They pop in at one of the nearby diners for breakfast, and when they come back to Steve’s house Bucky gets his bag and heads back to his place. At the door Steve hands him a small parcel, heavy and solid. Bucky doesn’t ask about it, since there’s just a hint of vulnerability in Steve’s eyes, which gives him a fair idea.

At his apartment Bucky is meticulous about putting away his gear, cleaning the guns, his own and the one he took from Romanova’s stash, and only after he’s done he opens the parcel Steve gave him. As he expected it turns out to be a stack of sketchbooks, enough of them that they must span several years. They’re all new though, nothing from decades back, but then again Bucky’s fairly sure he saw everything Steve drew back then.

He opens the one on top of the pile, and since Steve is in habit of dating his work, Bucky knows it must be the first one after he woke up from the ice. The first things in the book are cityscapes, both New York as Bucky remembers it from the forties and the modern city, sometimes the two of them melding together, as if Steve was living in two times all at once. There are human shapes too, but nothing distinct, nothing that could be clearly indicated to be any specific person.

Then there is a skip of several months, after which there is a flurry of portraits; Steve’s mother, Peggy Carter, the Commandos, Howard Stark, and Bucky himself. Several renditions of all of them, albeit Bucky sees that he is easily the most common subject. After that comes a period of several Peggy’s one after another, both as Bucky remembers her and as an old woman. It only then registers that he saw an article about her death right before he was found in Bucharest, that it’s another connection to the past that’s been taken from Steve.

After Peggy the portraits of people Bucky used to know keep reappearing, but they’re interspersed with those of the Avengers for the first time, months after the Battle of New York. The most common ones by far are Romanova and Barton, which makes sense since Steve worked at SHIELD with them. There are people Bucky doesn’t know, also from SHIELD probably, and other faces that are familiar. He wonders if Steve ever looks back to his sketchbooks, if it’s jarring to find out to have drawn people that turned out to be HYDRA. Bucky well knows there needs to have been some kind of connection for Steve to have taken the time to commit their likeness on paper.

Then, almost a year after Steve woke up, drawings of random things start to appear, and even now that it’s years in the past Bucky feels relief, because Steve had started to draw for the sake of it, not just for remembering or dealing with things. There are random details that must have caught Steve’s eye; still lives, body studies, all familiar from Steve’s old sketchbooks. And all throughout, Bucky keeps finding himself.

After DC the random drawings stop for a while, and it’s mostly Bucky, in all the stages of his life. The boy, the young man from before the war, the newly minted sergeant that hadn’t yet truly seen war, the soldier that Steve pulled off Zola’s table. The assassin.

Bit by bit, the random drawings return again, and it goes on like that, Steve’s moods clearly visible. Looking at the book from Wakanda, Bucky understands how close Steve must have been to falling into another trap, because there is a single minded obsession that lessens when New York comes back.

And then, the drawings from the days after Halloween a year and a half earlier. It’s hard to look at them because it’s the two of them, but not the way it happened. In the sketches, drawn fast and frantic, with dark lines etched deep into the paper, they’re both naked, wrapped around each other. The feeling of betrayal is in all of them, clearly perceptible to Bucky at least, the vehement lines speaking of how Steve would have wanted it to happen. Bucky almost feels like he shouldn’t look at them after all, like he doesn’t have the right, but Steve gave the book to him. Steve meant for him to see, to know.

Bucky moves forward again, nearing the day he came back to New York, and past it. There are all kinds of drawings, but he is still the most common subject. He pages all the way through the book, and then returns back to the day of his arrival, and looks through all of it again. It’s a startling realization that all the drawings since his return are of him now. There are none of Bucky from before, none of the man he used to be.

Steve has told him, and could tell him again a million times, but it would never be as clear as this; Steve doesn’t expect him to be the same man he used to be. The man Steve sees is the real Bucky. The affirmation of his hopes leaves Bucky reeling.

***

Bucky holds onto the books, decides he will return them if Steve asks but not otherwise. Steve doesn’t ask, the same as Bucky hasn’t asked for his notebooks back.

It’s a Sunday in April, early in the morning. Neither one of them could sleep the previous night, and they’d ended up at Archie’s again before heading for breakfast. The streets are still deserted as they part, and Bucky takes a few steps before turning around again.

“Hey Steve,” he calls, and Steve stops and looks at him, smiling, hair golden under the morning sun. The words are out before Bucky really decides to let them. “I wanted you, back in the day. Before the war and during it. Wanted to kiss you and more besides. Wanted everything.”

Steve stands there, eyes big, no words making it out. Bucky smiles, although it probably comes out more as a grimace, and turns to walk toward his apartment. Steve doesn’t come after him.

 

* * *

 

Steve makes it home somehow, and there he collapses to sit on the floor, leaning to his front door. It’s funny how just a few words can change how to look at your entire past, to shift what you thought you knew into delusion. Or maybe not a delusion really, just inaccurate. Untrue.

Turns out he wasn’t the only one who wanted, the only one who carried a secret inside, guarding it from all the prying thoughts. He had no idea, no idea at all that the want could have been mutual, but turns out it was. Steve wonders if Bucky knew about him as well, if Bucky saw more than Steve did and decided they still shouldn’t. Bucky always did seem to know more about Steve than even he himself did sometimes. But it doesn’t feel like that, not now that Bucky has told him. It doesn’t feel like Bucky was connecting it into something as the words came out of his mouth. Maybe it was just that, another aspect of the sometimes painful honesty between them.

Steve never really thought that he was hiding something from Bucky back before, but he did, he was hiding such a massive thing that it must have affected everything, even though he never even considered the possibility. He told himself it was just his problem, nothing to do with Bucky, but it’s not really true, when it colored everything Steve perceived of Bucky, when everything was laced with the want.

And now in the new world Steve has become more withdrawn, less willing to reveal his heart, and it’s hard to let go of the self-protection even when it is to do with Bucky. Maybe even especially since it is to do with Bucky. Bucky on the other hand has spent decades knowing he can’t trust anyone, and that must be a difficult habit to break. Still, somehow, not even discussing it, they’ve begun to peel the layers away, they’ve begun letting each other see every flaw, everything that shines. Everything strong about them, every weakness.

It’s a work in progress; they’re still guarding bits of themselves, Steve maybe more than Bucky, but they’re steadily moving forward into something new. By now Steve is starting to see a definite outcome, but he’s not quite ready yet to grasp it, to fully commit to it.

He doesn’t want to look into future too much, doesn’t dare yet, and now his past is thrown into confusion by what Bucky told him. Now he can see a host of new possibilities, and his brain keeps asking him, what if, what if? 

There are so many what ifs, but Steve pushes them away. They don’t matter, not now that they’re in the past. The choices have been made, lifetimes lived, and they’re still here. It doesn’t matter what they might have done, only thing that matters is the choices still ahead of them.

Steve is still feeling paralyzed.

***

Same as after every reveal they have made to each other since Bucky came back, nothing changes on the outside. They don’t talk about it, neither one of them brings Bucky’s confession up when they see each other again, but it is there, at the back of Steve’s head, another piece to the puzzle.

They go to Archie’s to spar, they have breakfast, lunch, dinner, they watch TV on Steve’s couch or just talk, and sometimes Bucky doesn’t go back to his apartment for the night. One of Steve’s guest rooms is practically Bucky’s room these days. Sometimes Steve considers asking Bucky to just come and stay, but he never does. On one hand, he really doesn’t want a rejection, and on the other, he’s not even sure he himself is ready. It’s better to let it be.

They continue on, and sometimes Steve thinks they’re having an extremely drawn out disjointed conversation, each new addition to it coming days or even weeks after the previous one. Still, it doesn’t feel like they’re stalling, it’s just the pace they’re moving at. Maybe it’s the pace they need to be able to open up, to trust each other in this whole new way.

It’s something Steve wouldn’t have thought they’d need to learn to do eighty years earlier; to trust each other. Back then even the idea of not trusting Bucky would have been unthinkable. Now, Steve thinks it’s not really that they’ve regresses so much, only that his definition of trust has changed. After all, now he knows he’ll need to stop hiding to reach it.

***

Steve gets a birthday present from HYDRA, meaning that there is a plot to bomb several locations where people will be celebrating the day that the Avengers uncover only just in time, on the early hours of the fourth. It leads up to another chase after HYDRA that takes a better part of a week, during which they encounter yet another result of an attempt to enhance human beings. There’s no knowing whether the people experimented on volunteered for it or are victims, by now there isn’t much left of their humanity, no reasoning, just thirst for blood. 

There are five in total, and the Avengers manage to contain two of them, the three others are dead at the end of it. There’s not much hope the two will regain any of their apparently lost humanity back, but they still need to try.

By the end of the week Steve is exhausted, and doesn’t really find it in himself to feel satisfaction even though they’ve won. It’s just another reminder that for all the good he can do, maybe it would have been better if there never had been the serum at all. Then Steve never would have gone to war, but then Red Skull never would have existed either, and maybe HYDRA hadn’t risen like it did. There’s no knowing how the war would have turned out, how Bucky’s story would have turned out.

Maybe Bucky would have fallen on the front like so many others. Maybe Steve would have died young, due to an illness or in some back alley fight when Bucky wouldn’t have been there to pull him out of it.

Maybe Bucky would have come back and they would have lived their lives, pretending they never wanted more than friendship from each other, hiding every day until the end.

Or maybe they wouldn’t have hidden.

There are so many maybes, but the reality is what it is, and Steve can’t know if things would be better now if the serum had never existed. Truth is, it does, and there are both good and bad things done in its name, in the past, in the present, and undoubtedly in the future too. Steve knows the only thing he can do, the duty he has to both himself and everyone who worked on Project Rebirth, is to make sure his actions count in the black.

Steve is exhausted, and a bit down the way he sometimes gets as he stands in the middle of the ruin of the former HYDRA base. The Avengers are all around him, and he should make rounds to check everyone is fine, to make sure the prisoner transport is going optimally, that all the post-mission procedures are observed. He’ll get to it in a minute.

There’s a hand on his shoulder, and it is so familiar to let Bucky make him sit down and look at the gash at the side of his head. Bucky’s fingers, both flesh and metal, are gentle on his skin, his eyes serious when he peers into Steve’s.

“I don’t have a concussion,” Steve says.

“Yeah, not anymore.”

It’s probably a fair assessment; Steve did get a fairly hefty blow on his head during the final stretch of the battle, and it wouldn’t have ended well had Bucky not taken care of the attacker. Steve pushed through the momentary nausea, because it’s the only thing one can do in the middle of a fight, and now that it’s been a while he’s feeling much better again.

Bucky sits down next to Steve, hands him a bottle of water, opens one for himself and bumps at his shoulder to get Steve to drink. Steve settles back and does. He can take a moment to rest.

Steve had texted Bucky there was a mission as he always does, but he hadn’t expected to see Bucky appear at the Tower with Nat. Steve hadn’t commented on it, had just adjusted the plan to accommodate for Bucky’s presence, and despite a few double takes no one else had questioned it either. Most of the Avengers have by now at least met Bucky, but now is the first time Bucky has been a part of an Avengers mission instead of one of the small ones Nat usually takes on for herself. 

It’s probably the fact that she’d chosen to introduce Bucky into it that everyone had just gone with it. Steve knows it would be tricky for him to suggest it, even now that Bucky’s been officially pardoned, but everyone knows that Natasha has been distrustful of Bucky. Steve thinks it all has worked out rather well. He doesn’t know if Bucky wants to be an official member, isn’t sure if he’s going to ask it either, even when he would welcome Bucky in a heartbeat.

Steve takes the moment and gets up to his feet, rests his hand on Bucky’s shoulder for a second as thanks before heading out to see about his duties.

***

Bucky appears on Steve’s doorstep a couple of days later when all the post-mission procedures are seen through and Steve has gotten a good night’s sleep. He has a take-out bag in his hand, Steve recognizes the containers to be from the Mexican place he likes, and a long, somewhat unwieldy parcel under his arm. Steve takes the food down to the kitchen, leaving Bucky to follow him. 

Bucky immediately zeroes on the box that arrived just minutes before him. “What’s with the cake?”

Steve opens the box, revealing the  _ Happy Birthday _ on top of it. “Nat sent it.”

“I would have thought she’d bring it herself, instead of getting it delivered and having you eat it by yourself. That’s kind of melancholy.”

“I think she meant to, but something came up, and she needed to go.” At Bucky’s questioning look Steve continues, “I don’t know what it’s about, I think it’s something to do with her looking for her past. She’s still finding pieces of herself. And obviously I’m not going to be eating it alone, unless you’ve somehow lost your sweet tooth.”

“I haven’t. Here.”

Bucky hands the long parcel to Steve. It’s wrapped in plain brown paper, and when Steve tears it open he sees it’s an easel. It’s made of light colored wood, it’s sturdy but not heavy, adjustable so that he can use it with canvasses of many different sizes. Steve just stares at it before looking at Bucky who’s clearly hesitating to see his reaction.

“I noticed you didn’t have one. I think you’ve been saving space near that big southern window, so.”

“It’s perfect. Thank you, Bucky.”

“You’ll have to get the paints for yourself, though, that’s too complicated. This part I could figure out.”

“Not that I know much about modern paints, I haven’t even looked into it since before the war.”

“At all?” Bucky seems surprised and even a bit chagrined about the confession.

“You’ve seen all that I’ve drawn.”

The gift means a lot to Steve; Bucky’s choice to give him something that’ll help him get back to painting. Steve has been thinking about it, and as Bucky remarked, there is a place in the apartment he has allocated for it in his head, but he never got around to doing anything about it. Now he’s gotten the first push, so it’ll be easier to take the next steps. 

It warms Steve to know that Bucky remembers, and clearly also understands what art meant to Steve, still does even though he’s out of practice. It’s maybe the clearest parallel of how Bucky used to look after him back before the war.

They eat at the table Steve has in his little unkempt garden, drink beer and talk, and it does feel more like a birthday than any Steve has spent in the future, even if it’s not even the right day.

***

The summer moves ahead, and things continue in a familiar way, easy on the surface, but something simmering underneath, a new kind of potential. Or maybe not new, since in a way it feels like it’s the oldest thing Steve knows. The difference is that now it looks like it could become a reality.  _ They _ could be real, in a way they haven’t yet been, if only they dare.

It’s been more than six years since DC, and they’ve been long years, difficult years for so many different reasons, filled with pain, longing, and even betrayal. It’s still not settled and easy for Steve, he’s still waiting, but now, finally, the waiting is laced with trust and belief. 

Ever since Bucky came back to New York Steve has been wrestling with a question, can he let himself rely on Bucky again, can he let his heart open without fear of another bruise? Can he trust this feeling rowing inside him? And now he does. It happened almost without him realizing, he doesn’t know the moment it happened, didn’t see where the slope carried him, but now he’s here.

It feels like coming home.

Steve has never been good at talking about his feelings. He can inspire or reassure, but to voice his inner truths and to be vulnerable like that, it’s difficult. Bucky’s no better at it really, probably never was, Steve has come to realize. For all that he used to be a flirt, able to say the right things to girls, Bucky managed it because it didn’t matter. Steve remembers that the sincere declarations even before the war were few and far between, and it’s the same now.

They’re trying though, difficult and stilted as it is, filled with long silences in between. Sometimes it’s like stripping the skin of your back, as painful and costly, and yet, Steve knows it’s worth it, it’s worth all the risk, all the possible pain to say these words.

It’s a late summer, nearly fall really, the air dusty and heavy, when Steve tells Bucky, “I know you’re not leaving again.”

He believes it now; losing Bucky again no longer feels like an inevitability. Now all the times Bucky has left or has been taken from him don’t fill his consciousness anymore. There have been so many times they’ve be separated; due to the war, an icy fall, decades of time, the new world, ice once again, and for the last time, the inevitable press of life itself. Many times Steve thought it was for good, except Bucky always, always has come back, and now he says he won’t leave. Steve finally believes.

Bucky smiles at him, and it’s a new smile, one that Steve hasn’t seen before, because this new Bucky doesn’t really smile that often. This is a smile that’s entirely happy, and it’s been lifetimes since Steve saw such a thing on Bucky’s face.

It is a perfect day.

***

After admitting the trust, Steve finally, truly acknowledges the want too, acknowledges it’s not just a reminder from past or distant potential, it’s something he will try to grasp. He is different, Bucky is different, and maybe it’s what makes it possible for him to now reach for it. It’s the final step, Steve knows it. It’s the one they will have to take together, and as the fall deepens and leaves turn to gold, Steve thinks they’re getting ready.

 

* * *

 

It’s Halloween again, two years since the one when everything changed between Bucky and Steve. There is an event at the Avengers Tower, a party that’s both a chance for the Avengers to let loose and some important and not so important people to smooch around, which means that not every Avenger is going to feel that relaxed. 

Steve certainly isn’t too comfortable, Bucky thinks, watching him move about the room from the bar. Steve is shaking hands and having selfies taken, and all the while he smiles, but it’s the one Bucky knows from the propaganda films, not Steve’s real smile.

It’s not really a scene Bucky likes, and he wouldn’t have come if Steve hadn’t especially asked. Bucky’s never been too good at saying no to Steve. It’s at least half the reason why he’s spent most of the last six years and change somewhere Steve wasn’t. These days he isn’t at all sure all of those reasons for staying away were valid, but he tries not to think about them. Past is past, and now he’s here, has been here for almost a year now. He hopes it’s what matters.

There are two good things about coming to the party, and one of them is that the whiskey is really good, and Bucky no longer gets sick of it, no matter how much he drinks. Not to mention, the bartender keeps refilling his glass without prompting. The second good thing is getting to watch Steve in the very well tailored suit. Bucky has no problems admitting to himself that he found Steve to be beautiful way before he was Captain America and everyone else cottoned on it too, but he has to admit that these days Steve does fill the suit very nicely, and that the modern slim cuts suit him well.

Still, Bucky isn’t quite sure why Steve asked him to come, since they haven’t really managed to spend time together at all at the party. For Steve it’s pretty much an official occasion, which leaves Bucky drifting. Some of the people at the party recognize him, but they don’t come and talk to him, his less than friendly glare takes care of that. Hence he’s mostly been left alone with his whiskey. 

He loses sight of Steve in the crowd, so he concentrates on his glass again, letting his gaze drift to the big window. It’s a lot colder than the Halloween a couple of years ago, the last time he spent the day in NYC. Now there are actually a few snowflakes falling down, even though they won’t stick. It’ll be a crisp night, though.

Romanova interrupts his musings by sidling next to him at the bar, getting a refill of champagne. They’ve pretty much made a truce, and they work well together when occasion calls it, enough that Bucky should probably start referring to her by her first name. Mostly he doesn’t just because, which is petty, but she seems to find it funny, so it’s okay.

“Steve just left,” she says, and Bucky feels momentarily at loss.

Why would Steve just go without telling him first, after asking him to come? Bucky doesn’t get it, until he does. It is the day after all, and they’ve been on the way toward something for the last few months, maybe even the last two years. He drains his glass and sets it down, sliding it away from him. 

“Guess I’ll be going too.”

“Not going to your place, I suppose,” Romanova says, smiling. She seems genuinely happy about how things are going, and it’s a stark contrast from how she looked at him that first day in New York when Steve was unconscious in the hospital.

“I am, at first anyway. I need to get something.”

Bucky makes himself walk, not run, to his apartment. The anticipation is thrumming in his veins, and he lets it, lets it carry him. At his place it takes him a few minutes, but he finds the black domino mask he never managed to throw away. He doesn’t need to change, since he didn’t bother with a suit for the party, just black jeans and a shirt with his scuffed leather jacket. He gets a few more things, among them a glove for his left hand, which is enough now that he’s not trying to hide from Steve, and he’s out of the door again.

The club is much like Bucky remembers, even if they’ve changed the decor a bit. The crowd is just the same; an incoherent mass of costumes, all over each other on the dance floor.

Steve has made it there first, as Bucky assumed he would. He too looks much the same as two years ago; wearing a white dress shirt and the same blue half mask Bucky remembers. Steve seems completely lost in the music, moving with it, and he keeps having to slip away from groping hands, Bucky sees as he approaches. Steve hasn’t seen him yet, his back is toward Bucky, who squeezes between the last couple and slides his arms around Steve, his hands settling at the greases of his thighs. 

Steve doesn’t miss a beat, just relaxes against Bucky, back to chest, hands coming to rest over Bucky’s. It’s the most natural thing in the world to nose at Steve’s jaw line, and as Steve turns his head Bucky catches his lips.

It’s the first time ever that they’ve kissed, and it’s honestly fairly awkward like this, since Steve is just a shade taller than Bucky. Despite that, it goes into Bucky’s head, and Steve melts closer to him, mouth hungry and tongue curling over Bucky’s. It’s perfect even when it isn’t.

Bucky has enough sense to pull back enough that he manages to turn them chest to chest, and he pulls Steve again flush to him. It’s familiar; after all he did the same two years ago, but now Steve’s mouth is again on his and that part is gloriously new. Bucky deepens the kiss, and then finds the beat of the music, starts moving them to it. Steve follows his lead, and they’re lost in it, lost in each other, kissing and kissing.

The arousal is heady, Bucky’s jeans are getting uncomfortably tight, and Steve is no better. Bucky pulls away from the kiss again.

“Take me home or I’ll fuck you in the bathroom, and I don’t think the stalls are sturdy enough,” Bucky says.

Steve laughs, his breath a puff on Bucky’s skin, before dragging him into a searing kiss, harder and more demanding they’ve yet shared. It lasts only for a few seconds before Steve lets go and pushes Bucky toward the exit.

 

* * *

 

During the last year Steve has walked through his front door with Bucky dozens of times, but this time is different. This time feels more like the first time he did, two years ago exactly. It feels the same and yet not at all.

This time, Steve knows it’s Bucky. This time, they’ve worked their way toward this moment, slowly, achingly. Deliberately. They’re not just falling and hoping it will be fine. They know, this time they know it will work. Steve is still buzzing in his skin, the anticipation thrumming all through his body, the arousal an undeniable presence at the back of his head.

Steve kicks the door closed, makes sure the complicated lock takes, because he wants to be safe, wants to not worry about anything other than Bucky, who pushes him against the door and kisses him again, hard and insistent, before pulling away just a bit, enough to look at Steve.

There’s a moment’s pause, how do they proceed from here?

Steve lets go where his hands are gripping at Bucky’s hips, and reaches up to remove the black domino mask. The last time Bucky hadn’t let him see, hadn’t let him touch, but now it’s a different story. In the dim glow of streetlights Steve can see Bucky’s smile, soft and happy. His hair is short and styled so it doesn’t cast shadows on his face. This time he’s in full view. Steve tugs away the glove from Bucky’s left hand and holds onto it as Bucky unmasks him too, his hand warm on Steve’s face despite them having just come in from the autumn chill.

Steve frames Bucky’s face in his hands and just looks, long enough that Bucky squirms under his gaze, even though his smile doesn’t waver. That’s when Steve kisses him again, and it’s wonderful, it’s perfect, they’re here and it’s real, they’re both on the same page finally.

Steve sucks Bucky’s tongue into his mouth, getting a bit lost into the sensation, resting on the door, pulling Bucky against him, every solid inch of his body, grinding their hips together. Bucky swears against his mouth, hard already, they’ve both been on the way ever since Bucky laid his hands on Steve at the club. Bucky in the end is the one whose patience snaps, and he drags Steve from the door toward the bedroom.

On the second flight of stairs Steve runs his hands over Bucky’s side and has to stop and laugh when Bucky nearly trips, clearly oversensitive already. 

“Why is your bedroom so far away?” Bucky grumbles and leans against Steve, pulling him in for another kiss before pushing him toward the top floor.

“You were complaining about my old room arrangement before, and look at you now.”

Steve grins over his shoulder and drags Bucky finally into the bedroom, throwing off his jacket and then pushing Bucky’s off his shoulders. They get rid of their boots too before reaching for each other again.

“Clearly I didn’t see all the benefits of using just two floors of a townhouse. Maybe we should have just gone for the couch.”

“No,” Steve says, pulling Bucky again close and undoing the buttons of his shirt.

“No? Why’s that?” 

“Because I like the bed frame.”

Bucky smiles in a new way at that, slow and satisfied. “Yeah, I can think of a few uses for it.”

Bucky bends down to kiss Steve on the neck, to suck a mark right on the pulse point, and Steve pushes his shirt off, running his hands all over bare skin. He can’t really look, not with Bucky pressed so close to him, and they haven’t put on lights anyway, so Steve learns by touch. He’s never properly seen Bucky after it all, not even in Wakanda. Now Steve’s fingers find scars he doesn’t know yet, even though he expected them to be there. Against him, Bucky has gone still, his breath warm over Steve’s throat, a tension quivering in his muscles.

Steve pulls away a little, and gently lifts Bucky’s head, just to make sure it registers, and bends down to kiss the uneven skin on Bucky’s left shoulder, to run his tongue over flesh and metal. Bucky lets out a sigh, and his fingers find their way to Steve’s hair as he continues exploring, not just the area around the scar, but rest of Bucky too.

When Steve’s thumb brushes over Bucky’s peaked nipple it’s as if a spell is broken, and Bucky is sprung to action again. The buttons of Steve’s shirt fly everywhere as Bucky hastens to get it off him, claiming Steve’s lips again.

It’s no time at all before Bucky has stripped Steve out of his undershirt and practically manhandled him into the bed. Steve goes with it all, unable to avoid going pliant when Bucky gets more assertive. This he knows; this Bucky is the one from two years ago, and thinking of it doesn’t sting anymore. Now they’re together again, now the mask is gone and Steve can look at Bucky all he wants. And he does; Steve lets Bucky push him down against the pillows and keeps looking at him, the sharp contrasts painted on his skin by the moonlight, his eyes darkened. Bucky’s thighs bracket Steve’s body, his deft hands, flesh and metal, run up Steve’s forearms and close around his wrists, pushing them down on both sides of Steve’s head.

Steve pushes against the hold, not with all of his strength but enough to feel constricted, enough to know that he’s really held down firmly enough that it would be a struggle to free himself. It’s a rush in his head, and he lets go, relaxes in a way he usually has a hard time reaching. Bucky’s lips curve into a smile and he kisses Steve again, hard and insistent. Steve tries to arch up toward him, wants to feel skin against skin, but Bucky presses him down, not letting him. All Steve can do is give up, to let Bucky have his way with him, and it’s all Steve wants right now.

As if sensing he’s finally yielded Bucky lets go of one wrist and drags the other up. He gets out something soft, a piece of fabric, and deftly ties Steve’s hand to the bed frame with it, and then pulls out another one for the other hand. Steve pulls a little, noting that despite the apparent delicacy, the material is sturdy. He could get away, he well knows, but he and Bucky both know he won’t try. It’ll be enough to remind him to stay still.

There’s a self-satisfied smirk on Bucky’s lips as he sits up on Steve’s hips to survey his work.

“You’ve been planning,” Steve says, heat curling up in his stomach, reminding him how uncomfortably tight his jeans are.

Bucky leans forward, settling to lie on top of Steve, stretching his legs out. “And you haven’t? Don’t think I didn’t notice you were wearing exactly the same clothes you did two years ago.”

Steve doesn’t get to reply, because Bucky dives down for his mouth again, shutting him up. Bucky is a solid weight on him, and Steve surrenders to it, luxuriating in the feeling of skin on skin. He wraps his legs around Bucky’s hips, and Bucky grinds down onto him, slow and maddening, his hands mapping Steve’s arms and sides, lips sucking another mark on his neck. It’s wonderful, Steve could stay like this forever, but he wants more too.

He means to tell Bucky to get on with it, but all that comes out is his name in a breathless groan, but Bucky seems to get the point, since he moves down and undoes Steve’s belt and pulls his jeans and underwear off all at once. Bucky shucks his own away as well, and Steve lets himself look again, commits the moment to memory because he wants to paint Bucky just like this, color leached out of his skin by moonlight, his arm glinting, the easy grace of his body as he stands there, looking down at Steve.

Steve would swear even the last of his blood makes its way down, leaving him lightheaded under Bucky’s gaze. There are ten seconds, then twenty, and Bucky doesn’t move, not even a bit, until Steve can’t help but twitch, to tug at the ties binding his wrists. Then Bucky does move, not back to bed but to rummage through Steve’s nightstand for lube, which is actually good thinking.

Bucky’s back soon enough, and he settles again over Steve and between his legs. Steve’s cock drags over Bucky’s abs, and he lifts his hips, trying to get friction, but Bucky pushes him down again and holds him steady as he kisses his way down Steve’s chest. Steve has a fair idea of how Bucky likes it, and he makes himself relax again, to try and not push it but just revel in the feeling of having all of Bucky’s attention on him.

He’s breathing hard, his skin coming alive under Bucky’s mouth, and it’s somehow less urgent now, as if every bit of him finally believes it’ll last, that he can just enjoy Bucky mapping every inch of him with his mouth, because they will have all the time in the world.

Bucky moves further down, toward Steve’s lower ribs, and there he falters in his exploration. Steve knows why; Bucky’s lips have crossed over to the scar that’s still prominent, the skin shiny and white, even after a year of healing. It’s no longer red like it used to be, and Steve knows it’ll disappear in time, the serum erasing all the marks. For now it’s still there, though, the reminder of Steve nearly dying. Bucky trails his tongue over the scarring, taking his time.

Bucky shifts then, toward the center, and brushes his lips over a spot below Steve’s sternum, lingering there. The skin is smooth now, no visible marks there, but it’s the spot where the last bullet on the helicarrier exited Steve’s body. 

Steve isn’t quite sure of what to say, how to snap Bucky out of it, how to make him stop paying attention to the ghost of a gunshot wound, one that he gave to Steve. “I’m okay,” is what Steve ends up whispering, and it feels wholly inadequate, but Bucky surges up to kiss him again on the lips. 

He pauses over Steve, looking at him for a few moments. “Yeah, I suppose you are.”

It feels like a confession and a victory, because Steve knows Bucky carries guilt still for what happened in DC, but now it seems like he’s finally believing they can get over it. In truth Steve has, he never blamed Bucky for anything, and now he thinks Bucky can finally accept it.

Bucky stays leaning over Steve but lines up their hips and grasps both their cocks in his left hand, the touch of metal both strange and exhilarating. Steve faintly recognizes the significance of this, that Bucky chooses to use it to touch and not hide. Mostly though, he’s overcome with pleasure, panting and gasping.

“Come on, Steve, get the edge off.”

Steve feels the words against his throat more than he hears them, and it’s the intent in them, the hint that there’s more to come that sends him over the edge. Bucky comes too, and collapses over Steve, heavy and loose, grounding Steve better than anything. Steve kind of wants to touch him, to run his hands over every inch of Bucky’s skin again, but he can wait. There’ll be time.

Bucky kisses Steve at the hollow of his throat, dipping his tongue into it, and Steve’s cock twitches again with interest. Apparently Bucky doesn’t need much time to recover either, since Steve can feel he too is half hard again. This time when Bucky makes his way down Steve’s body he doesn’t stop at old injuries, just concentrates on driving Steve mad with want. 

What follows is, as Steve nearly deliriously thinks, the most infuriating blowjob in the history of mankind. Bucky takes him into his mouth, runs his tongue all over Steve’s cock, sometimes doesn’t even touch, just blows air over him. Steve can’t move his hips, Bucky’s left hand is firmly holding him down, and he surrenders to it, beyond words already, still desperately needing more. 

He doesn’t know how long it lasts, but finally Bucky pulls away. Steve is rock hard and somehow not even close to coming, despite having had Bucky’s mouth on him. His hips jolt at the cool slickness of the lube when Bucky coats his cock and straddles him, still graceful and coordinated. As he sinks down Steve realizes Bucky must have opened himself just now while driving Steve mad with his mouth toward chasing the edge, and it’s the last coherent thought he has.

Bucky is warm around him as he sinks down, tight but not uncomfortably so, and Steve is soon bottomed out, nearly cross eyed from pleasure. Bucky takes only a second to shift his knees for a better position before he starts to move, and it’s almost too much.

There are strands of hair sticking into Bucky’s forehead, his eyes closed and mouth slightly open. He looks so relaxed, in a way Steve doesn’t remember seeing, letting go of control while still having it, having Steve under him. He’s beautiful, and Steve has always known it, but it strikes him again. And now there’s nothing wistful mixed to the thought, because Bucky is here, all for him.

Steve plants his feet on the bed for leverage and starts moving in time with Bucky. The first thrust punches a moan out of Bucky, and it flashes like electricity along Steve’s spine, because so far Bucky has been silent, the same way he was two years earlier. Steve knows he himself is loud, but now there’s Bucky’s voice too, and it lifts him to new heights.

In a moment Bucky grasps his cock and starts stroking himself, and Steve is glad because he’s not going to last. He lets himself to up the pace like he wants to, and holds on until Bucky is coming, his whole body convulsing, tightening, and finally going slack, and only the Steve lets go.

Steve blacks out with the orgasm, and it takes a moment for him to come back to himself, breathing hard, Bucky a heavy weight on top of him, face tucked against Steve’s throat. Steve slips out of Bucky as he lifts himself up a bit to untie Steve and bring his arms gently down one at a time. Steve doesn’t care about the minute twinges, as soon as he’s free he wraps his arms around Bucky, holding him close.

Steve presses a kiss into Bucky’s hairline, because it’s the only place he can reach without moving. There are words in the air, the continuation to their disjointed discussion, but Steve doesn’t speak them out loud. He can’t yet, the confession still feeling too large. He doesn’t have to, because from the way Bucky’s metal fingers caress the side of his face, Steve knows Bucky can feel the words as well. There will be a day to speak them aloud, and the waiting now isn’t going to be difficult, because they already know the truth about the matter. They know the truth about words like always, love, and home.

They should tidy up soon, should find a more comfortable position that’ll let them sleep, but neither of them is in a hurry to move. They’ll get to it in a little bit.

***

Steve wakes up warm and cozy, Bucky plastered against his back, the metal hand resting on the middle of his sternum. For a few minutes he just lays there, because he’s more content than he remembers ever being. He now knows he can wake up exactly like this every day.

They’re both hard, which isn’t surprising at all, and they get each other off in the shower, hands on each other’s cocks, kissing under the spray.

They go running later, and it’s an unusually beautiful day for November. They run fast enough to get people looking, and Steve doesn’t mind, for all that he tends to feel uncomfortable by the attention. He stops in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge and pulls Bucky to him. Bucky just smiles, heedless of the people walking past them, and places his hands on Steve’s hips. It’s an exhilarating feeling, not having to hide, for any reason.

Steve kisses Bucky right there under the sun, and he’s happy. He can feel Bucky’s laughter bubble against him, and knows he too is happy. They both are, together, at long last.

**Author's Note:**

> All done, hope you liked where I dropped the boys in the end.
> 
> I'm also on [tumblr](http://stellahibernis.tumblr.com/)


End file.
